


Damian Wings, Son of the Pidge

by wraisedbywolves



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, this should maybe be rated T for swearing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:08:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8005111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraisedbywolves/pseuds/wraisedbywolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason did not get a pet. Absolutely not. He wouldn't do a thing like that. Never.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damian Wings, Son of the Pidge

“That has got to be shittiest nest I’ve ever seen,” said Jason, apparently addressing his cup of battery acid bodega coffee. 

A disorderly pile of sticks, leaves, and receipts culled from the alley below had been building up at the bottom of the ladder on his fire escape for a few days, and it was so hilariously awful looking he couldn’t bring himself to clear it away. He’d finally seen the culprits that morning; it seemed that a pair of Gotham’s second favorite sky-rats had chosen the spot just outside his window as the perfect place to start a family.

They landed back on the fire escape while he watched, one with a q-tip in its beak and the other holding about a third of an orange parking ticket. They laid both of their treasures proudly on the pile, and the larger bird started to spin in place, bobbing its head dramatically up and down and cooing proudly. The smaller bird pushed the q-tip into what was apparently the perfect spot, then took off again. Jason rolled his eyes.

“This is so goddamn stupid, first rainstorm we get and that bullshit is all gonna end up a few floors down,” he told the bird. The pigeon didn’t seem concerned.

\---

By the time the first rainstorm of the season arrived, the pigeons had successfully laid two eggs in their heap of sticks and garbage. Jason informed them that he still didn’t  _ like _ them as he crawled out onto the fire escape with a half-broken umbrella and a roll of military grade duct tape. The larger bird had been sitting on the nest--Jason saw that the smaller tended to be there in the morning, while the larger took over the afternoon shift--and moved to perch on the rail of the fire escape, cooing and growling as it puffed out its neck at him. 

Despite this attempted harassment the bird was too skittish to come closer, and Jason managed to fix the umbrella in place over the nest before the rain started coming down in earnest. It formed a windbreak on two sides, and although he grumbled about the pigeon shit covering the fire escape on his way back in it felt good to know that they had a chance at surviving the storm.

\---

Jason was out on patrol when the first egg hatched almost three weeks later. It had been a long night, and the sun was already starting to bleed over the edge of the horizon by the time he climbed carefully down the ladder to go in through the window. The pigeons had gotten used to the fact that they had to share the fire escape with Jason from time to time, but while he was disabling the secondary security system on his window he heard a new sound on top of the quiet, burbling coo of the adult birds.

He had come to find the cooing reasonably pleasant. The new sound, however, was like a broken squeaky toy being sat on. At first he panicked, thinking that a cat or maybe a really industrious rat had gotten into the nest, but when he pulled up the edge of the umbrella he found the smaller pigeon crouched protectively over what he could only have described as the ugliest yellow sock puppet he’d ever seen. If he hadn’t watched the parents build the nest and sit on the eggs, he would have sworn that the sticky little blob of canary colored fluff was some kind of weird sea bird or a duckling with a messed up beak. It was leaning up toward the adult bird, it's lumpy beak opened wide as it squeaked and wheezed insistently.

“Looks like you build a nest entirely out of trash and you end up with some kind of bizarre garbage baby,” said Jason. It was the stupidest looking baby  _ anything _ he’d ever laid eyes on, but he couldn’t help feeling kind of proud on the parents’ behalf.

He lowered the edge of the umbrella back down, then climbed into his apartment to get some rest.

\---

The second egg never did hatch, but the first baby made more than enough noise for a pair. It only seemed to quiet down when one of the parents put their whole beak over its face, which Jason had to assume meant they were feeding it. Jason had moved his desk over closer to the window and caught himself watching the baby grow as he went about his daily tasks--research, threatening phone calls, cleaning his favorite Beretta, tinkering with his helmet, whatever needed doing. He refused to give the birds nicknames because that was stupid, but he found himself watching them closely despite himself.

He was amazed by how quickly the ugly little baby grew; it seemed to double in size by the end of a week, and the damp-looking yellow fluff was quickly being crowded out by thin grey tubes all over its wings and back. The internet informed him that they were called “pin feathers,” and while they were still pretty stupid looking it was starting to resemble a bird more than a muppet.

Jason started to worry when the larger bird stopped showing up at the nest. The two parents had shared their duties more or less equally from the start, but when the baby was 10 days old Jason realized that the larger one hadn’t put in an appearance for almost 24 hours. He sat by the window all morning waiting for it to come back , but there was no sign of the bird. The smaller parent continued to come and go, feeding the baby each time it returned, but it was starting to look a bit ragged with the effort. The baby looked significantly more like a pigeon, covered with blotchy grey feathers on most of the top half of its body despite scraps of yellow fuzz still sticking out on the head and neck, but it still flapped and squeaked and wheezed and Jason didn’t think it was anywhere near being ready to leave the nest.

\---

The baby bird was two weeks old when the smaller adult failed to return to the nest. Jason had been watching anxiously for hours, staring out onto the fire escape as though he could summon the parent by force of will, but as dawn stretched on toward noon he had to accept that it was unlikely to come back. He hadn’t slept since coming in from patrol, but he couldn’t possibly take a nap while the ugly little bird’s squeaks got progressively weaker outside his window. At 12:05, he grabbed his phone with a growl and dialed a number he’d been trying to forget for years.

The phone rang three times before it was picked up.

“Alfie?” asked Jason, knowing his voice sounded like shit after a long night out and three cups of god-awful coffee.

“Master Jason, it’s always a pleasure to hear from you,” Alfred answered, and Jason could hear the smile in his voice.

“Hey, look, I need some advice--you help the little demon with his menagerie, right?” Jason asked, although he already knew the answer. “What do you know about birds?”

Alfred paused for a moment. “Well, I can recite a great deal of trivia regarding the nesting habits of various species, but I’m afraid Master Damian has yet to lure any actual robins into the Cave so my practical knowledge is somewhat more limited. What is it that you need to know?”

“I need to know what baby pigeons eat.”

“I see,” said Alfred, and Jason groaned at the amusement in his tone. “Well, if you’re considering taking such a creature into your care, the first step with any young animal is to keep it warm and sheltered. Why don’t you set up a small heating pad for your new friend while I find out what an appropriate diet might look like?”

“It’s not my friend, I just don’t feel like cleaning up dead bird off my fire escape,” Jason growled, “There’s already too much pigeon shit out there.”

“Of course. I understand perfectly,” Alfred chuckled. “I’ll call back shortly.” Jason was already moving to the cabinet in his bathroom to get some towels and the electric blanket he’d bought when he had the flu the year before.

“Thanks, Alfie.”

\---

Half an hour later, ugly little baby bird was settled into a large mixing bowl lined with towels, the electric blanket up against the outside so that it could scoot toward or away from the extra heat. Jason found that the bird tracked the movement of his hands, flapping its stubby wings and squeaking louder every time they came near. If he reached down towards it, it would lean up and try to stick its beak between his fingers, obviously looking for food.

He was busy moving his hand back and forth, watching the baby follow the movements, when his phone rang again and startled them both.

“Master Jason, I trust your new charge is secure?” Alfred asked, and Jason could pick up the slight echo of the Cave’s comm system over the line. He wondered what Bruce would think of the main computer being used to research pigeon care.

“Yeah, I’ve got it in a bowl with some towels and shit. Greasy little thing. So, what does it need to eat?”

“Against all odds it would appear that low-quality dog food is the preferred dietary substitute for such a creature. Something with lots of corn and wheat, all those things Master Damian insists we not give Titus. It should be soaked in water to soften, and then you’ll have to hold his beak open and push bits into his mouth. Do we know the young fellow’s age?”

“Yeah, it’s, uh, 14 days,” said Jason

“Then he ought to be fed every 3 to 4 hours during the day. It seems that young Master Pigeon will beg for food and stop when he’s had enough. You’ll need to watch his weight, perhaps via a postal scale, and as he gains weight you’ll feed him less often. I can forward you a chart detailing the ideal weights for each stage. A bowl of seeds should also be available to him, and he should be encouraged to try to eat on his own as soon as he takes an interest in them.”

“Okay, shitty dog food mush until it gets big and then it can hit the road. Sounds like a plan.”

“Several wildlife experts state that a pigeon should leave the nest around one month of age, and that they can become quite attached to their caretakers.”

“Well, all it does right now is scream at me so I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

“Of course, Master Jason. Please do let me know if you require any additional assistance.”

“Thanks for the help,” said Jason, smiling despite himself as he hung up the phone.

\---

Jason was absolutely certain that the pigeon was going to starve by the end of the first day. He’d run down to the store for a bag of dog food, but stuffing mushy bits of kibble into the bird’s beak was much more challenging than it sounded. For something that spent most of its time screaming its head off for food, the bird was remarkably bad at accepting food when it was offered. Jason finally managed to hold its beak open by lowering his hand until the pigeon stuck its head between his fingers and then pinching the corners of its mouth to hold it still. 

The baby thrashed under his hand, but he did manage to get a few pieces of food into it. The bird paused for a moment after swallowing, blinking comically and looking around. As soon as it spotted Jason’s hand, however, it was right back to flapping and screaming like it had never been fed in its life. He rolled his eyes, but reached out to try the maneuver again.

After nearly half an hour, the bird finally stopped squeaking every time it finished a chunk of food, and settled down deeper into the bowl. Jason stared at the bird with dread, afraid that he might have hurt the fragile little thing, but as he watched the baby just closed its bulging eyes and tucked its chin down to its chest for a nap. Jason sighed, and tried not to smile as he cleaned up the bits of mushy dog food and decided he was overdue for a nap as well.

\---

For a full week things continued much the same way. The bird did sleep at night--and a t-shirt draped lightly over the bowl helped convince it that it  _ was _ night even if the room wasn’t fully dark--so Jason was free to work without worrying too much. During the day, he napped between feedings along with the bird, letting its squeaking wake him up whenever it got hungry. True to Alfred’s research, it started picking at seeds at the end of the week and started demanding food slightly less often as its weight climbed a few grams at a time. The yellow fluff on its head disappeared entirely, and the bald spots under its wings and chest started to fill with prickly little pin feathers.

Jason was proud of what he’d managed to accomplish. 

The bird looked more like a pigeon already, and when it wasn’t sleeping it had started hopping out of the mixing bowl to explore the apartment. Most of the time, it headed straight for Jason, flapping and squeaking as it tried to climb up onto the couch or use his sleeve to pull itself up to the vantage point of his shoulder. He learned quickly to keep a towel handy to put under the bird, and once it stopped pooping on all of his shirts he found that he enjoyed its company. It was on target according to the weight chart Alfred had sent, and he was starting to think about how jealous Damian would be if he knew about the bird.

Not that he intended to tell Damian or anyone else about it. He was just trying to be a decent person by giving the little ball of feathers a chance, he wasn’t going to  _ keep _ the thing. 

\---

He really, truly wasn’t planning to tell anyone else about the bird, but his scruffy little secret got out after a week and a half thanks to Dick Grayson and his big mouth.

He and Dick had a long habit of breaking into one another’s various apartments, sometimes just for the hell of it and sometimes for the convenience of a dry place to land on a rainy night. They both liked to prove their skill by bypassing each other's security systems, and were constantly trying to up the challenge by re-setting and re-arranging the various measures. On that day, Dick was apparently too impatient to wait until patrol to pass on new info on a case Jason had been working, and felt like showing off a little camera-hacking at the same time. 

Jason swore loudly when he heard the knock at his door; he hadn’t seen anything on his feed from the front door downstairs, and the proximity alerts for the stairwell hadn’t gone off either. He jumped off the couch, dislodging the pigeon, and grumbled as he threw the towel off his shoulder to answer the door. He wasn’t  _ entirely _ surprised to find Dick there, grinning like he’d gotten away with something. Jason rolled his eyes and leaned against the doorframe, trying to crowd Dick back with his bulk just to push him around a bit.

“What the hell do you want, Wonderbread?” he growled.

“What, I need a reason to visit my favorite brother?” asked Dick, obviously trying not to laugh.

“Don’t you have respectable human being stuff to do? Stuff like not hanging around the Narrows?”

“Calm down, Jaybird, I just wanted to drop this off.,” said Dick, He held up a plain black memory stick. “And to tell you that you should invest in a better camera downstairs,” he added with a grin.

“We’re not all made of money, Golden Boy,” said Jason, but he took the thumb drive and removed himself from the doorway to let Dick in. It was better not to let any shop talk happen outside.

He had forgotten that his kitchen, directly off the front entrance, was currently the center of a small hurricane of bird-feeding bullshit. There was the bag of dog food, of course, but he also had a bag of seeds from the pet store and an assortment of dried beans and peas from some health food place he’d passed by a few days earlier. At the internet’s recommendation he’d also started adding small servings of greek yogurt to the bird’s daily meals via a tiny syringe, something to help kickstart his immune system. Extra syringes, a pile of towels, and a postal scale added to the chaos and the result was something that looked like a very poorly planned science experiment.

Dick stopped when he saw it, cocking his head to one side as he tried to make sense of it all. Jason usually kept his apartments very neat, so the strange assortment of things cluttering the table seemed even more out of place.

“Jason what one earth--”

He was cut off by a loud squeak from Jason’s indignant companion, who had managed to clamber up onto the arm of the couch and was flapping his wings angrily. The pigeon couldn’t get any real lift, but he did have enough feathers to flap his way up onto his toes and scoot a few inches.

“--Jason, is that a  _ pigeon? _ ” Dick looked stunned.

Jason scowled and pushed past him, silencing the bird’s objections by putting a hand down on the arm of the couch. The pigeon immediately began picking at Jason’s fingers as though determined to groom them somehow. 

“I don’t know, genius, what do you think it is?” he asked sourly.

“Cool it, little wing, I was just surprised! No need to get all defensive.” Dick crossed the kitchen and approached the bird with caution, squatting down to get closer to his eye level. “It really is. You’re keeping a pigeon in your apartment.”

“I’m not  _ keeping _ him. He’s not a pet or anything. It’s just... “ he hesitated, looking away for moment, then focused back on Dick. “He was out on the fire escape, and the parents disappeared. I didn’t want the little guy to  _ starve. _ ”

“What’s his name?” asked Dick, reaching out to wiggle his own fingers near the bird as though offering himself up for inspection.

“He doesn’t have a  _ name _ because he’s not my  _ pet. _ But sometimes when he gets really annoying I call him Damian. Sounds a lot like the little demon.”

Dick grinned up at Jason, taking his eyes off the bird for a moment. “Little wing and littler wing. You should see your  _ face _ , Jason, you look like--”

The pigeon puffed up its skinny little chest and lunged at Dick’s fingers without warning.

“--he BIT me!”

Jason laughed. “Yeah, that sounds like something Damian would do.” 

Jason reached down and put his hand in front of the bird, who stepped up onto his palm and started bobbing up and down. He still didn’t coo like an adult, but he was moving from full-time screaming to a quieter growling noise. Jason brought the bird up to his shoulder, where he hopped off and started grooming the hair behind Jason’s ear. Dick looked a bit jealous.

“So, what, you’re saying you’re just gonna stick him outside once he can fly?”

“Once he can feed himself and get around on his own, he has to either clear out or start paying rent,” said Jason. “According to Alfie I should put a big cage out on the fire escape and let him hang out there for a while to get used to the weather and watch the other birds a bit. Then he gets to go live his own life.”

“What if he comes back?”

“Then he’s an idiot,” Jason said, although he was scratching the top of the bird’s head and smiling slightly as he said it. “Who wants to live in this shitty apartment?”

Dick grinned. “You know what you should name him?”

“I’m not naming him.”

“Damian Wings.”

\---

Jason hated to admit it, but at five weeks Damian was an entirely self-reliant bird. His feathers had all come in, giving him a dark, mottled tone made up mainly of greys and browns laced through with hints of black. His neck had taken on a soft green and violet iridescence, and most of the primary feathers on his wings were strikingly white. He was eating entirely on his own and the wheezy squeaking sound that had given him his name was gone, replaced by a mix of low-pitched growls and burbling coos depending on his mood. He flew well, and had picked a favorite shelf on top of the TV stand to occupy while Jason was either out or asleep.

Any time Jason was home, the bird liked to be on his shoulder.

Jason knew that he ought to discourage that habit; while Damian hadn’t hesitated to bite Dick, he also hadn’t been exposed to other people for the most part. He couldn’t very well land on strangers once he was released. Even though he knew that, Jason hated to brush him off and found himself apologizing every time Damian growled and grumbled and hurried to climb back up. Against his better instincts, Jason found himself talking to the bird while he was at home and even though there was plenty of food and water left out he hated to stay at his other safehouses unless it was an emergency. He was convinced that Damian missed him when he was gone too long.

The day he caught himself wondering if Damian would eat fresh peas if he brought some home and whether or not he should get the organic ones to make sure there were no pesticides was the day he realized that he needed to release the bird before he could dig himself any deeper. He bought the peas anyways--why shouldn’t Damian have a really good snack before he left?--but he also bought a large rabbit cage to put out on the fire escape so that Damian could get used to the weather. Positioning it when he got home required some creative workarounds on his security system, but by nightfall it was securely in place. He resolved that Damian would start living outside like a proper pigeon in the morning.

Preparing Damian for release did not go as planned.

Getting him into the cage on the fire escape was simple enough. Damian was always very friendly with Jason, and wasn’t shy at all about being handled. When Jason scooped him up in one hand and carried him to the window, the bird cooed agreeably and sat still without any problem. When Jason put him into the cage, he looked momentarily confused, but set about exploring the corners of the enclosure and picking at the peas scattered on the floor of the cage. When Jason tried to close the window and walk away, Damian realized immediately that something was wrong.

Damian threw himself at the door of the cage, growling and cooing and flapping his wings as he lunged to stick his beak out between the bars. Jason tried to stand back, to let him throw his tantrum and wear himself out, but watching the pigeon struggle to get back to him was harder than he’d expected.

“I told you you couldn’t stay, little dude,” he tried to explain to the inside of the window. “You’re a bird. Birds like to fly around and shit, you’re not supposed to just bum around some loser’s apartment all day. You gotta go out there and find a lady pigeon and build a shitty nest on somebody’s fire escape, you know?”

Neither Jason nor the window were convinced by his speech. After five minutes, he couldn’t stand it anymore and wrenched the window open to retrieve Damian from the cage. Damian cooed frantically as soon as he was back in Jason’s hands, pushing to climb up his forearm and nestle his head into Jason’s elbow. Jason closed the window and left the cage outside.

\---

Jason did try to put Damian outside a few more times, but he didn’t get any better at looking or walking away. He just couldn’t stand it. It seemed clear that the pigeon  _ trusted _ him, and didn’t understand why he was trying to abandon it. After the fourth attempt, Jason admitted that he just didn’t have the heart to go through with it.

“Wingding is never going to let me live this down,” he told the bird sternly as Damian spun and bobbed and cooed happily on his shoulder. “Seriously, I’m a bad guy, I’m not some  _ kid _ who keeps strays because he feels bad for them. You’re ruining my reputation.”

Damian clearly didn’t care.

“You want some popcorn, buddy?” Jason asked after a few minutes, and he took the rolling coo that answered him as a ‘yes.’

**Author's Note:**

> Damian Wings is a REAL ACTUAL PIGEON YOU GUYS. Look at this uglycute little dude!  
> http://wraisedbywolves.tumblr.com/post/150210984092
> 
> UPDATE 8/15/17: Rather than putting him up for adoption when he got bigger, as was the original plan, we, like Jason, decided we couldn't live without this pigeon. He's now lived with us for a year, and is a robust and handsome lad!   
>  http://68.media.tumblr.com/fd9c9edb3bfaf61ba5c77515cc5c59c0/tumblr_oo0qn4JW3Q1qkzrazo3_1280.jpg


End file.
